Information continues to come in [about “ALDA”]. This is a right wing rump group of deans, a combination of deans of elite law schools who do not want to meet diversity requirements and barely accredited law schools who don’t want to meet any requirements. They first surfaced about fifteen years ago supporting the anti-trust action against the American Bar Associations accreditation efforts. It is not yet clear how many deans are in this group, but they are purporting to speak for the entire 110 membership of ALDA. The requirement of long-term contracts for clinical and legal writing faculty seems to have provided the impetus for this new effort.
One addition to my earlier memo, the AALS found out when a reporter called Carl Monk, Executive Director, for comment. The ABA and the AALS are gearing up to respond. I believe there is a network of law deans forming to disown this group.
We are dealing with the Bush Department of Education, and they would love to eliminate or severely limit tenure and totally eliminate long-term contracts. This is part of a broadly based, organized attack on faculty independence that has been going on for at least fifteen years. This new threat must be taken seriously.
The good news is that this move seems to have provided the impetus for an alliance between tenurial and contract faculty. Part of the long-term strategy against faculty independence was to divide and conquer.
–Marina Angel
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